Hollywood Hed-Topper scarf - ingenious!

I recently acquired several mysterious scarves labeled Hollywood Hed-Topper - Arlis Mfg. Co. Los Angeles. Basically each scarf is a large square with a lined band that extends beyond the square and has a clear ring on one end, snaps on the other. Wrapping it around one’s head and snapping the band together made sense to me, but I just knew there was more to this.  Today I stumbled upon the instructions—what a coup for the manufacturers to have Jayne Mansfield show off their creation! 

From hakes.com, where a scarf with its original packaging was auctioned

 So I tried some stunts of my own and I am in love with this scarf! Thank goodness I have two more (navy with white polka dots and burgundy) to ease the pain of letting this one go! 

The Hollywood Hed-Topper (also good as a neck-ringer!) available in my Etsy shop

Etsy crafters take note...this design would be fun to make and stock in your store, would it not? 

Fabric of the week: Sateen

Continuing my series showcasing fabrics and fabric terms from the new VFG Fabric Resource, today is one of my favorites.

I love sateen. Looking for a dressy, elegant fabric, or are you looking for comfort and wearability? Sateen has a foot in both camps. I think I'd prefer to wear a party dress of cotton sateen rather than most any satin.

Sateen 

The name sateen means the diminutive of satin, which is traditionally made of silk, while sateen is made of cotton, sometimes a cotton blend. It is constructed in a tight satin weave with float threads that cross the face diagonally…sort of a satin/twill hybrid. Already lustrous and smooth by virtue of its weave, the best sateen is made of combed cotton and mercerized and can be very glossy. It can be printed, often with flowers, or plain. 

Uses: Dresses, skirts, jackets, household decorations

©Vintage Fashion Guild - Text by Margaret Wilds/denisebrain,  photo by Hoyt Carter

Sateen is one characteristic fabric for Hawaiian-made vintage fashions, combining as it does casual elegance with the coolness of cotton. This 1950s sarong-style long dress by Kahana Manufacturing - Honolulu, is a good example. 

Going up?

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For my August monthly theme I was inspired by the old department store elevator—“2nd floor, shoe salon”—and the anticipation I would feel going up. I loved the grand old Frederick & Nelson in Seattle, with each floor a new adventure, from the Paul Bunyan Room of the basement to the Tearoom of the 8th floor.

In honor of my theme, for August I'm changing my usual slogan Top-Drawer Wearable Vintage to Top-Floor Wearable Vintage! : )

Fabric of the week: Felt

In case you didn’t see the start of this last week: Each week I’m showcasing a fabric or fabric term from the new VFG Fabric Resource. 

This week’s fabric is nonwoven felt, a fabric that may surprise some. For instance, did you know that the felt that is widely available in fabric and craft stores is not a real felt, but an imitation? That’s because genuine felt is made of wool fibers (more rarely fur fibers) and is much more expensive to produce. 

Just this weekend I was talking with a vintage fabric store owner (Ethel of The Knittn’ Kitten in Portland, Oregon...a really neat lady and a great little shop!). She told me that she had been finding felt yardage at estate sales, and became aware that it was soft, springy, a little lustrous and of great quality. That’s when she knew she was finding real wool felt. If you haven’t felt it (no pun...) you are in for a treat.

Felt, nonwoven 

Nonwoven felt is a fabric made in a process that involves fibers of wool or fur being subjected to moisture, heat, friction and pressure. The minute natural scales on the fibers cause them to tangle and mat while the heat and moisture shrink and thicken the fibers to form a dense fabric. Felting is the name of this process. Wool felt is probably the oldest fabric known to man, referenced in ancient writings and found in Bronze Age tombs. 

Fine felts may use rabbit fur fibers, while the finest use beaver fur fibers. These fine felts are known for their use in hat making. 

The fabric called felt which is currently widely available for crafting is actually an imitation; usually made of acrylic fibers and adhesives, no natural fibers are present. Other felts available are made of part wool. Half of the fibers must be natural for the fabric to felt. 

Uses: Hats, bags, slippers, padding, crafts, and a wide range of household and industrial applications

©Vintage Fashion Guild - Text by Margaret Wilds/denisebrain,  photo by Hoyt Carter

Crafters know that felt does not ravel, so it can be cut and used without finishing its edges. Iconic 1950s poodle skirts were made of felt. Interestingly, wool and fur fibers are so capable of felting that even only 50% wool/fur fibers will entangle non-wool fibers sufficiently to produce genuine felt. Another interesting point: The soft matted nap surface of many wool fabrics is produced by the same method (heat, friction, moisture, pressure) in a process called fulling.

Dramatic late 30s stylized felt fedora in my web store

Fabric of the week: Taffeta

I just published the new Vintage Fashion Guild Fabric Resource, and although there are many, many fabrics and fabric terms I want to add yet, it is pretty big already. I hope you go have a look: VFG Fabric Resource.

To make reading through it a little more manageable, I want to introduce one fabric or fabric term to you per week. The first is a truly well known fabric among vintage wearers—taffeta. Many are the great party frocks made from it! Even though it is well known, you may not be familiar with certain aspects of taffeta—I certainly wasn't until I did some research.

All the links take you to definitions in the VFG Fabric Resource, in case you are not familiar with the meanings. For taffeta, there is a pretty lengthy list of fabrics in the same family (under “See also”).

50s taffeta dress and bolero in my Etsy shop

Taffeta

A crisp, tightly-woven plain weave fabric usually with very fine horizontal ribs, taffeta is made of filament yarns (silk, acetate or rayon), sometimes with staple yarn filling. It is often lustrous.

When woven of two different colored yarns, shot taffeta is created, also called changeable or iridescent. When the iridescent taffeta is silk, it can be called shot silk. Woven of three colors (two in the weft, one in the warp), it is called chameleon taffeta.

Taffeta is often the fabric used for moiré, and it can be processed to create ciré.

Taffeta makes a characteristic rustling sound when moved. The sound is called scroop (a late 18th-century word blending scrape and whoop) in the case of silk taffeta. The scroop sound results from an acid finishing treatment

The name comes from the Persian taftah, a 16th-century fine silk fabric.

Uses: Dresses, underskirts, linings, trims, umbrellas

See also:

 Bengaline

 Ciré

 Faille

 Grosgrain

 Moiré

 Ottoman

Acetate taffeta

Flocked taffeta

Embossed taffeta

Jacquard taffeta

Silk taffeta ©Vintage Fashion Guild - Text by Margaret Wilds/denisebrain,  photos by Hoyt Carter

P.S. If you have a small piece—it doesn't need to be larger than about 2" x 2"—of chameleon taffeta (definition above) you would like to donate to the cause, I'd love it to photograph and add to the resource!

The new Fabric Resource

Excuse my absence for the past few weeks...I have been adding some finishing touches to the new Vintage Fashion Guild Fabric Resource, now published.

I say finishing touches, but really, this is the start. I hope to continue adding fabrics and fabric terms as I can. I began this project in 2007, and I have really learned a lot about fabrics, which fascinate me. I hope this resource helps others learn and enjoy fabrics too.

You can see the Fabric Resource, and all its components, by going to the Vintage Fashion Guild homepage and looking under VFG Resources.

Please let me know what you think!

Fabrics and me

photo courtesy of desktopretreat.blogspot.com

One summer, I read the Fairchild’s Dictionary of Textiles cover to cover (don't I know how to have fun?) and chose a collection of fabrics that seemed to come up in vintage clothing descriptions and in my observations. I didn’t, and don’t, consider myself an expert on the subject, but I love learning about fabrics.

I really have to know fabric better all the time. I sell vintage clothing, and my buyers and I want to know what a item is made from. To know this is to tell someone whether she will be allergic, how to wash or clean the item, predict how it will take dye. It is to know how fine it is, how long it will last, how the color will hold up. It helps make certain the vintage. It gives a better sense of how it will feel when worn. Buying clothing online is hard enough, and knowing all you can about the item is just smart.

The year after I read the Fairchild’s I was a board member of the Vintage Fashion Guild, and I proposed the idea of the VFG website having a fabric resource. For many years, the VFG Label Resource has made an inestimable contribution to vintage knowledge and interest, and the other resources (Fur Resource and Lingerie Guide) are also of tremendous value (heck, you should just go check out the whole site!). Everyone thought a fabric resource was a good idea, so I got started on it.

Fast forward to 2012, and I have been working bit by bit on a fabric resource for most of five years now. Fabrics are complicated. As one article in an issue of the great American Fabrics magazine begins:

The history of textiles is the history of the world...politically, socially, economically.

So much of human history has been interwoven with fabrics—any one fabric can take you back to ancient civilizations, or even prehistoric times. This makes many of them difficult to quickly summarize.  I noted one of the fabrics in the Fairchild’s that was particularly mind-boggling for me, frisé.

frisé [free-zay’] 1. Originally the finest grade of linen made in Friesland, The Netherlands. It was strong, stout, grained, and well-bleached. 2. A French term for curled. 3. A coarse ratiné fabric that is made with slub yarns in a plain weave ( See RATINÉ 1.) 4. A looped pile fabric usually of uncut loops that may have a pattern cut into them. This term sometimes is used for TERRY CLOTH or BOUCLÉ FABRIC. 5. A coarse, stout cotton or linen fabric that is made in a plain weave with a flat, wiry texture and a pronounced rep or rib. Made in imitation of the worsted or mohair pile fabric known as FRIEZE. All fabrics listed in 1.—5. are used for upholstery. 6. A cut pile carpet of twisted yarns in solid color or of varicolored yarns.

You can see there are divergent histories here, along with terms that may not be familiar (they certainly weren’t all familiar to me). There are comments about usage, origins of the name, related fabrics. Not all fabrics have this much complexity in their definitions, but some have more.

I’m not trying to make excuses for the long time I’ve been working on this; on the contrary, when the Fabric Resource is published in mid July it will just be a start—I plan to continue working on it. I really just mean to say it is a very deep subject, with much to know. My hope is that the Fabric Resource will provide basic information about fabrics, help people searching for the name of a “mystery” fabric, help with determining fiber types, and maybe even inspire some interest in further research.

I know I’m inspired by fabrics, and I hope others are too!

Would you like one sneak peek? Just to explain, there will be a link to a definition in the resource for all the words in bold type, and a link to any related fabrics. It will be possible to click on all photos to enlarge them to 1000 x 1000 pixels.


Chinchilla cloth

Constructed like fleece, with a long nap, chinchilla cloth is given a machine finish which rubs the nap into nubs. It is made of wool, wool blends, and the warp may be cotton for strength. The town of Chinchilla, Spain is where the present fabric was first made.

Uses: Coats, hats

See also fleece

Get the Look: My Mother

Today, in honor of Mother’s Day, I'm celebrating my very first favorite style icon. I've talked of my mother before (Flowers for my mother, Style ideas from my parents) but I'm devoting this post to her style alone.

Mama would laugh and blush at the thought of this. My mother did not consider herself stylish; she wasn’t particularly interested in clothing, but she most definitely had a discernable style, and it’s a style that influences me.

Born in 1920, she was in her twenties in the 1940s, and 40s style suited her and remained a lifelong influence on her. She was big on navy blue, plaid, good basics, scarves, gloves and generally what I'd call handsome clothing. She wasn't the frilly type. On the other hand she rarely wore trousers but preferred dresses. She emphasized her waist. She knitted, sewed and tatted, and I don’t remember her ever wearing a commercially made sweater. I'm choosing to highlight my mother’s style in the 1940s and 50s, my two favorite decades for clothing and coincidentally when my mother was a young woman.

Have you ever noticed that people tend to like clothing from the era when their parents were young?

My mother in the 40s

There’s that waist emphasis and another simple and flattering dress

40s fern print rayon dress

Mama knitting

50s hand-knit cream wool sweater

Her ubiquitous white blouse, plaid skirt, and great shoes that (it must be noted) caused some havoc for her feet later

50s white cotton blouse

My parents, with my mother in the midst of creating something

40s navy gabardine suit

Mama in a plaid skirt, sporty jacket and gloves

50s rayon dress with plaid scarf and trim

I’ve always been convinced that every woman needs a classic coat

40s burgundy gabardine coat

...and a classic scarf

My mother in plaid again, leaning on my father’s MG. The jacket was most likely his. 

50s plaid summer dress

My parents on a ferry in 1956. I love the flowered circle skirt!

50s fish print circle skirt

My mother, very soon to give birth to me, with my aunt Marie and brother John

Happy Mother’s Day to all the First Favorite Style Icons out there!

Here comes the sun

There’s vintage fashion for warm weather this month at denisebrain! Please have a look at my latest theme for a little inspiration:

I thank you, the manatees thank you!

Because of your purchases in the last two weeks, I am able to write a check for $221 to the Save the Manatee Club. I know it will be used well!

If you like to add your donation to the cause, visit savethemanatee.org

Today is Earth Day

It’s Earth Day and a very good day to remind you that vintage clothing is a chic way to go green.

I also want to remind you that 25% of every purchase from any of my shops through the end of April will help endangered manatees through the Save the Manatee Club. Please read about how far they've come, and how much is left to do, by reading that organization’s Earth Day message.

This is also the anniversary of denisebrain, which I started in 1999 on Earth Day. 1999...can you believe it? I scarcely can!

An early effort

...and more recently.

9/11

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

On September 11, 2001, I sold this raspberry suit to a woman working in the Pentagon. A few days later I heard from her, apologizing for taking so long to pay, but she'd been very distracted by events. I don't even know how she remembered the suit at all.

I remember the reaction of the world to 9/11, particularly the raw, on-the-street reaction of ordinary people all over the world. To them, we were still an ideal. We were Hollywood, Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mantle, T-birds and T-bone Hawkins, Coca-Cola, Apple, Ella and Elvis, Martin Luther King, The Statue of Liberty, great teeming New York, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, golden waves of grain, cowboys and Indians, the railroad, good public schools and libraries, flight, baseball, front porches, The Blues, purple mountain majesty, Mustang cars and horses, Helen Keller, Star Wars, Marilyn Monroe, Broadway, jazz, rock-n-roll, hip-hop, sportswear, white hats and silver spurs, The Alamo, the circus, buffalo and Buffalo Bill, the Bill of Rights, beat poets, Janis Joplin, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, the gramophone and the light bulb, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Thoreau and Emerson, Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens, Michael Jordan, Kennedy, FDR, Oprah, Bob Hope, Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, emancipation, Muhammad Ali, the Smithsonian, the moon. We were hope. We were, as John Gunther reminded us in the 1947 Inside U.S.A., “the craziest, most dangerous, least stable, most spectacular, least grownup, and most powerful and magnificent nation ever known.”

That was what was attacked, and what remains. That is what is worth preserving and improving upon forever.

Vintage noir

It's a dark and stormy night in the big city.

Suddenly a woman screams!

Then there is the sound of running in the hall!

Where is the Maltese Falcon? And where did she get those killer shoes??

For the answers to these questions and more, who do you call? Who else but...

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I'm off to see the wizard! Care to join me?

My July theme is up!

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Honk if you love vintage!

My latest theme is up...how about taking it for a spin?

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No fooling: think pink

Little me, in pink as usual

I'm sure you would never know from looking at this blog, my store, my business card, etc., that I love the color pink! ; )

So why didn't I think of this before?!

Please visit my latest theme [click on image]:

...and watch for lots of great pink vintage finds in the upcoming weeks.

She's a Betty

Betty is 99 years of age. That in itself is cause for respect, but if you had to follow her repeatedly up a flight of stairs in her own home you would find even more reason for respect.

I was fortunate to meet Betty last year as she was preparing to leave her home for a retirement home. I presume she has some health issues that make staying home tricky, but she seemed to be doing pretty well, with the help of her niece.

Betty has clothes that were a conspicuous result of being a manager at one of Spokane's late-great department stores, The Bon Marché, to which she had been lured from The Crescent department store when The Bon, as it was called, was just moving into the area. She told me she "set up The Bon" for its opening in 1946.

On her style, Betty said that she wasn't fond of fussy, frilly things. Her clothes have just so many cute details and extra flourishes, they are of very good quality, with a number of the better American department store labels such as Suzy Perette and Lilli Ann. Materials are mostly wool, cotton and silk.

Cotton piqué dress with Matisse-like print

On how she obtained her clothing, Betty said that her husband and she were from rural Idaho, and grew up poor on small farms. Her husband was an Air Force pilot during WWII, and I had the sense from talking with her that they felt very fortunate to be together, to have survived The War, and to be better off than they'd ever been before. Betty said her husband spoiled her, buying her very nice clothes. Of course, her work image had to be important to Betty.

I have quite a few more to show still, but here is a sampling of Betty's items that I have sold or am selling.

All photos with links in their captions will take you to the item still for sale, the rest have been sold.

60s items, a wool knit set made in Italy for The Bon Marché; silky dress by Ranelle

Late 40s Prestige Junior cotton dress; Alex Colman cotton top and full skirt

Venito di Roma knit suit; Lana of Austria handloomed wool outfit

Billy-Dee black cotton dress; McKettrick sundress and bolero

Robert Piguet Adaptation suit by Dan Millstein; 40s blouse by Muriel

50s brown rayon dress; brown print R & K Originals dress, also from the 50s

Lilli Ann Knit coat and dress; Leslie Fay circle print wool dress

Kimberly wool & mohair outfit; equally sunny suit by Hanbury Ltd.

40s spoof news-print blouse, about which I blogged (here); 50s red faille coat dress

Yellow print embroidered sheath dress; Jerry Gilden Spectator yellow print sundress

Navy and white knits: Schrader dress with button-on jacket; Lilli Ann dress and coat

A third Lilli Ann dress & coat set from the 60s; cream knit dress by Corona Vienna

Suzy Perette sheath dress


Betty was and is a very petite lady—most of her clothing is size 2 to 4—but her sincere kindness is generous in proportions. She found it hard to give up her clothes, symbols that they are of her good and productive life, her loving marriage and all the respect she has earned. Knowing that others would actually wear and enjoy her clothes today pleases her and really eases her in letting them go.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if a new wearer of Betty's clothing has as long and happy a life as she is having, and passes the clothing on to another generation when she is 99?


The women I meet to purchase their clothing bless me not only with their clothes, but with their stories, photos and memories. I have highlighted others in the past, such as Lovely lady lot, You're a sight to see Mrs. Gordon, I love my vintage clothing sources, A tiny fraction of Mrs. Alexander's clothing, Another favorite source and The suitcase lot.

Shake it up

The denisebrain December theme is here! Please have a look (and listen) by clicking on the image.

Wishing you and yours a magical holiday season!

Give vintage a whirl

Care to take vintage clothing for a spin this month? Get inspired by my November theme, Dizzy.

Click on image to view, sound up.

My shoes are museum pieces!

These 1950s lucite-heeled shoes (recently sold)
are in this exhibit:
and these early 70s Fox & Fluevog shoes (on loan from my collection)
are in this exhibit: